How does a drag performer make New Year’s Resolutions?
We don’t… right fam? We are STUNNING, PURRfect and we’re not trying to make “fetch” happen. No new year’s resolutions here. We can just have a glass of wine, sniff some poppers and say “kudos” to those that do… right? That’s what we are doing… right darlings? Wrong.
Anyone with access to Superdrug, Asos and Instagram, can pass themselves off as a drag queen now. We need to be super vigilant and step beyond the rest. In the immortal words of the recently liberated Britney, “you better work B*&$#”. We need to be constantly refining and evolving our craft and new year is a perfect time for that. For hard-working drag performers; those keeping a show open in east London, it really is “new year; new you”. We need to navigate the dark forest of self-expression and light the way. In order to express the self, we need to reflect, discover and reinvent the self. There’s a reason we get paid £500 for a short stint when someone who just bought a Revlon eye-shadow pallet will do it for £50. We are worth every additional penny.
So, do we set goals then? A drag performer’s new year is more than setting goals. We don’t set goals like “I’m going to go to the gym”, “I’m going to stop smoking crack” or “I will stop selling my blowjobs for less than a 5er”. Instead, we ask ourselves, “who am I going to be this year?” “What do I actually care about?” “Who the hell even am I?” It’s a total re-evaluation and re-orientation.
January is the perfect time for queer performers. Suffice it to say, January is drier than my hole when I’m watching Daily Politics. With fewer gigs, it’s a perfect time to reflect and transform. The name of the month is actually taken from an old Roman god called Janus who has two faces on one head. I like to think of Janus as the god of drag performers because we’re two-faced. We have a face for the stage, painted for the gods, that shines outward, hard as diamond and twice as valuable. We also have a face that looks inward. Without having to be on stage as much, we use that inner-looking face and that’s where the change comes from. If we didn’t look inward, we wouldn’t know what to project outward. We would just be a projection of what we thought drag ought to be, not a projection of our true and authentic selves. What is the point in doing drag if you’re not expressing your true authentic inner queerness? January is the month for that reflection. There is no surprise that 2 of my drag siblings realized they were non-binary in January of all months.
So we do all this on 1st January… right? Nope! We don’t do this on the first of the month omg! Usually, on the first of the month, I am crying about my perpetual solitude, some of us are still high from NYE (Maneeta I’m looking at you), Vivian is praying for a reboot on Netflix and Bella U. Voyage is sacrificing her ex-financé to some ancient pagan deity, whose name sounds like me trying to deep throat. Where was I? Oh yes, it takes a month to even figure out what our resolution is going to be. I think everyone should take that time. If you don’t take the time to figure out what the goal should be, you end up setting goals you don’t even care about. What’s the point in putting that effort into something you don’t give a wooden toss about? Trust me, I toss a lot of wood.
Setting our new year’s resolution is scarier and deadlier. Because we put everything, our entire dragsona, into the magic cauldron. After Mystic Munta and Bella U. Voyage gives it a couple of alchemical stirs, something totally new emerges. The old “Miss Representation” went into the pot and what emerged was “Miss Unquenchable Thirst”. Where’s the old drag queen gone? She is no more. She has sadly died a death. Without that death, we would not have that exciting new expression. This is the magic of a drag performer’s new year’s resolution and while we might keep the old name (so people know who we are) we are a new creature. That is scarier than it sounds. Our dragsona is really just an extension of who we are and well we just lopped off a piece of ourselves and hoped it would reattach fine. We need to throw ourselves at our art. Give ourselves over to it.
The thing with art is that you can try and create what your audience wants, but then you just end up being a reflection of what already exists, “bloody drag queens who just keep breeding like rabbits.” (quote: Bernadette from Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Watch it! That’s queer history darling.) If you just reflect what an audience wants right back at them, you’d just end up being just another drag performer. I mean being a typical drag performer is perfect for the odd hendo, and damn do we do a good hendo, but I expect better of myself and my fellow performers do too! And any hendo that has Miss Basic has frankly been sold short of what our art can be. We need to be something you have never seen before: more true, more authentic, edgier and draggier than ever before.
It is the martyrdom of being a drag performer that you go through this process. You sacrifice the comfort and stability of knowing who and what you are, for lighting the way for other queer people into the mists of authenticity and truly free self-expression. Expressing yourself in a way never seen before is like venturing into a dark forest. You do not know how people are going to react, it’s unknown and scary. It’s much easier if a queer artist has gone before you and shown people the beauty of that particular uniqueness. My close and personal friend Crayola… – who is also hireable via Dragged Around London, hire us! – Crayola says that the ultimate end goal of drag is to self-annihilate. If you have broken down all boundaries, then you have no boundaries to break down and no more drag to do. This is what I mean about lighting the way to freedom and self-expression. If people are able to be 100% free to be who they are and express who they are, it’s time for the drag performers to retire. The dark forest of self-expression is now well lit, mapped and a tour guide is available for £9.99. Until that time, we queer performers have work to do.
What does the process look like? You just take the alone time to start working on something you have never done before and it slowly becomes an obsession, something that consumes your concentration; your mind; your body; your essence. That’s what I call going into the cauldron. You immerse yourself in it, almost like going underwater. It’s only the 10th January and Eyvana and Bella have already started complaining about not seeing me leave my room much this year. What comes out is something we did not even realise we had within us. Suddenly we have a brand new performance and well our dragsona has evolved.
The beauty of January is the lack of an audience. As we pour ourselves into our craft without an audience something beautiful happens. We produce something that isn’t originally designed for an audience. It’s more authentically our true selves. It doesn’t always make sense. It’s actually a scary time where you suddenly realise that you are not what you thought you were and you shed things that have ceased to be authentic. Drag performers need to shed the unauthentic or people watching you will leave in a heartbeat. Our newly reborn dragsona is barely a child and yet we need to crown it with all the authority of 100-years on stage and put it out there for people to love or hate. As a queer performer you know you did January / February right if you finish a stint and the audience just stares at you in a traumatized silence not sure whether to laugh, cry or wet their pants. If you’re lucky they will do all three.
Mid-January to February is the best time to go to drag shows and hire our performers. You see that new material before it is sanitized for an audience. Soon after it has been put on stage, we can refine that new expression and make it suitable for an audience, but the first few times it’s going to be more raw than barebacking. March – May everyone is trying to participate in drag competitions so they need their material to work and be less quirky. This can make it easier to digest, but it’s less raw by then. June-September everyone is doing pride stuff. October our feet have blisters and we are trying to squeeze out a quick Halloween look and then it’s panto season. February is the best time to get out there and see something new. See this stuff while it’s still crazy; while it is still raw. Don’t go see an established performer, their bread and butter is essentially retiring into being comfortably consistent, go see a new performer, someone burgeoning, someone who has only been going 2-3 years. This is the time to see something real, something raw, something challenging. Don’t be surprised if you leave the experience changed.
Can I just finish and say that this does not need to be limited to drag artists or queer artists. Anyone can find themselves here. The cauldron they want to pour themselves into can even be something as common as Cross-Fit if it needs to be. Just don’t do that stuff near me, I’m allergic. It really is time to start something new and be a new creature. Even if it does not work, at least you learned something.
Never limit it to something you have seen other drag performers do or other people do. Maybe next year my resolution will look like parkour or something that really doesn’t belong on stage, who knows? Maybe I’ll become an accordion player, now that would be scary!
This time last year I was learning what I could from a Japanese art-form called Butoh which is soooo very undrag, but let me tell you it made for some haunting and strange performances that frankly will work for a Halloween night. There was something deep in me that I needed to get out and I’m not talking about my sex life. Something so deep it’s never been out into the light of day before and it doesn’t know quite how to talk yet. Stay tuned. Whatever it is, be your true selves my darlings. Pour yourself into that pot and see what emerges.
Your Love,
Dolores Day
This represents the views of Dolores Day, and not the views of Dragged Around London Ltd. Our drag performers vary in a number of ways and many may not share her views
